MNEMNOSYNE
On the threshold
between past and future
Stands memory
The sentient enactment
Of language and identity
Culture and relationship
A living story
Edited ongoing
For content,
(cohesiveness of plot)
For context
(clarity of meaning)
A fluid filter
For the journey of experience.
Herein lays the opportunity
In that soft gap between
Reality and remembrance
A framed opening
Hinging on the outliers,
The recollections that visit
Unexpected
Wandering heralds
Blowing in with a whispered urgency
And impeccably divine timing
To shake the foundation
Change the story from within.
Our memories are not coded fact
Nor are they the blueprints
For the tragedy of always and never
They are a birth-place for creation
That when opened become a doorway
To the ever evolving
Construction of self.
November 1, 2020: Memory is tricky. Some events we struggle earnestly to remember while others we long to forget. Client memories are often painful and a deep cause of suffering. It is helpful to me to remember that memory is a construction and as such ever in development. This balance between assimilation and accommodation (Mahoney, 2003) means that we are always reorganizing experiences and ourselves in a continual creation of our own mythos and self. This is immensely hopeful to me and to my work as a counsellor. It implies some degree of choice in our stories; it implies the possibility of change. As poet David Whyte (2016) says "We actually inhabit memory as a living threshold, as a place of choice and volition and imagination, a crossroads where our future diverges according to how we interpret, or perhaps more accurately, how we live the story we have inherited". Yes. This threshold becomes the ripe ground of therapeutic interventions.
Mahoney, M. J. (2003). Constructive psychotherapy: A practical guide. Guildford Press.
Whyte, D. (2016, July 30). Memory [Status update]. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/PoetDavidWhyte/posts/memoryis-not-just-a-then-recalled-in-a-now-the-past-is-never-just-the-past-memor/1505187172840614/